


tell me what you need in the whole wide world

by chickenfree



Series: lord have mercy on my rough and rowdy ways [3]
Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Dan Has A Service Dog Now: Extended Edition, Domestic, Established Relationship, M/M, farm au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-18
Updated: 2019-12-18
Packaged: 2021-02-26 01:35:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,390
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21841534
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chickenfree/pseuds/chickenfree
Summary: “I don’t know. What did you want to be when you were a kid?”Dan levels him with a look. His eyes trail down, for a second, making a face at the way Phil’s sitting now, but then he meets his eyes again.“A sheep farmer,” he says, flatly.
Relationships: Dan Howell/Phil Lester
Series: lord have mercy on my rough and rowdy ways [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1543711
Comments: 18
Kudos: 36





	tell me what you need in the whole wide world

“And how’s your Dan?” his mum asks. She’s left him on speakerphone on the kitchen counter while she gets ready to leave to see his aunt, and her voice keeps drifting in and out.

“He’s good, thanks,” he says. Mostly out of habit, if he stopped to think about it, which he doesn’t. “Except Trout ate his sock this morning.”

“Just the one?”

“She tried to get the other one, but I distracted her and she gave it up.”

She’d absolutely booked it around the flat while Phil ransacked the kitchen for something that was tempting enough to use as a bartering chip. Dan had tried to give chase, for a minute, but his head had been pounding since they’d gotten up that morning, and tackling a dog built for speed as she ran gleeful laps with her new prize wasn’t really in the cards. 

“Should I get him socks for his birthday, then? When is it?”

Phil pauses, baffled. He never talks much about Dan, and she rarely asks. They haven’t properly met, other than the time ages ago when she came up to visit his gran while Phil was living in the guest room. Dan had come down the hill to spend the night, not realizing, had said about three very polite words to Phil’s mum over tea, and had disappeared just as easily as he’d arrived. It’s not that she doesn’t know that he’s around, but – Dan struggles to talk about most of his life right now with his own family, and the idea of Phil calling his mum and saying all sorts of things to her about it makes Phil’s stomach roll. The thought that she might start planning for his birthday is more than a little jarring.

“Oh – June?” he says, when he realizes he’s gone silent. “June 11th, I think.”

“What was that?” she says, crackly in the distance.

“In June.”

“Don’t sigh at me, Philip, your poor old mum left here fending for herself with this newfangled phone, while my sons –”

“Mum, please, you just have to be nearer to the speaker.”

“Come to dinner and show me how to use it, then.”

“You know you can just invite me, like a normal person?” he says, flopping back on the bed. Sure – he’s dodged his way out of more than a few invites since they’d moved closer by, and he hasn’t entirely explained the situation, but it’s not like he _avoids_ visiting them. Or maybe he does, but only for good reasons, which doesn’t seem like it’s the same thing.

“Friday, then? At five? And you’ll bring Daniel, this time, or I won’t let you in my house.”

“Isn’t it my house, too?”

“Not if I lock the doors, no. I know you’ve lost your key again. You think your brother keeps secrets from me like you do? Last week he told me where he hid his bong all those years, and I didn’t even _want_ to know that.”

\--

Dinner’s fine, and not much more or less than that, Phil decides. Dan’s entirely unlike himself, polite and reserved in a way that Phil only distantly recognizes from hovering while he talks to the doctors. He makes an effort to enunciate, and not swear, and not complain, and not talk too much. He manages about ten words the whole time. Phil comes away vaguely worried that there’s a stranger living in his house, but his parents seem pleased enough, and Dan gives him an uncertain smile when he catches his eye over cake.

\--

“He’s so young, Phil,” his mum says, while they do the dishes. She’d frowned and shooed Dan away when he’d tried to duck back into the kitchen after dinner.

It’s not like he hasn’t thought about it – but he forgets, sometimes, that the man who lives with him and matches his every move is only twenty-one.

“Yeah,” he finally says, eloquent as ever. “I suppose he is.”

“What’s his mum think of you?”

“He hasn’t got one.”

She doesn’t pause, and doesn’t quite waver, but she shifts her hands around the rim of the pot in the sink with just enough sharpness for Phil to notice. He turns a bit so he can keep one eye on her and one on the dishes she’s passing him.

Eventually she turns the tap down, so he can hear better, an old habit from when he was little and by her side every night.

“Philip,” she starts, not looking up. “To be honest I don’t want to think about this – but you were hardly more than a child four years ago, and if you hadn’t had a mum, and if this had been reversed. If you’d been ill, and a man your age now had taken you home, I’d – well, I wouldn’t exist, I suppose, but ghostie Kath would want that man to know that he’d better do right by you.” She pauses, scrubbing at the corner of a pan. “I’d want his mum to remind him of that.”

He’s barely even told her how ill Dan was. Even then, it was mostly bits and pieces he’d let slip to explain why they’d got a dog, and why Trout was going with Dan to work – which, actually, he’d only ever mentioned because he’d been repeating a funny story about Trout taking a shine to a man’s McDonald’s bag on the bus. Not because she’d asked, and not because he’d particularly wanted to tell her.

“Ghostie Kath?” he repeats, for lack of anything else to say.

She turns to look up at him, frowning.

“Tell me you heard all that, child.”

He nods, carefully focusing on drying the pot in his hands until she sighs and turns the tap back on.

\--

His parents start calling and inviting them over for dinner nearly every weekend night. They buy Trout her own water dish, and then her own puzzle toy to keep in the living room to entertain herself with, and then a dog bed so she can nap in high style while they watch a movie. Phil is pretty sure they’ve started inventing holidays, now, with the way his mum calls and announces that they absolutely must come over for National Waffle Day, or because it’s their quarter-anniversary, or because Martyn did something that doesn’t even merit a tea, much less a whole dinner _and_ a cake.

This time it’s because his dad wants help with – something. With holding a ladder in the garden? Phil didn’t quite grasp the explanation, but he catches Dan getting herded into the kitchen while he’s trying to put his shoes back on to go out into the back yard.

“Mum, we can trade, I can –”

“Nope!”

“No?”

“Daniel’s having mum time, now, go with your dad,” she says, the same words and tone she’d always used when Martyn was getting cornered to get chewed out over something Phil wasn’t old enough to know about.

Dan looks a bit shell shocked, looming comically large behind her, but he shrugs and smiles a little when Phil catches his eye.

\--

“What’d you talk about, earlier?” he says, softly. 

They’re supposed to be watching a movie, but his parents are talking in their corner, and Dan’s been slowly swaying farther and farther into Phil’s space. Martyn’s mostly watching, still, and Dan’s got that wide-eyed look of total focus that he gets whenever he finds some new thing that he’s never seen before, soaking it all in. Phil can’t focus on anything else but Dan.

“Not much,” Dan murmurs, tipping his head into Phil’s hand when he reaches up to scratch absently at the edge of his curls. “I just chopped some carrots, mostly.”

“And she didn’t talk?”

Dan shrugs, shifting against him. He tries to stretch out on the couch, but Trout makes a grumpy sound when his feet poke at her side.

Phil flicks his eyes up to watch his parents, for a moment. They’re deep in some conversation about a house that his mum found a listing for online, somewhere on the Isle of Man. They keep trying to drag Martyn into critiquing it, even though he’s trying to properly watch the movie, and anyways they all damn well know that they won’t move if both of their sons are still in Manchester.

“I’m sorry if she’s a lot,” he says, as quietly as he can, once he’s pretty sure they’re not listening. 

“I’m still watching,” Dan says, chiding. “Even if you’re not.”

“It’s – she means well, she just worries, and I know you have your own family, and you don’t need that, and I can tell her, but –”

Dan tilts his head, trying to see Phil’s face or something, but mostly bonking clumsily into Phil’s ear.

“I like her, Phil. She’s like you.”

Phil stills. Of course they’re alike, but – in an annoying way, mostly, he’s always thought. That’s what Martyn always says. He stares blankly at the screen for a minute, considering, while Dan goes back to properly watching.

His eyes start to drift, again, once he’s realized that he still doesn’t know what’s going on on the screen, and they’re in too deep for him to catch up. He catches Martyn staring at him – or at them? – and makes a vaguely bratty face back, like he would’ve when he was a kid. Martyn doesn’t really react to it. He just raises his eyebrows and smiles, like he knows something Phil doesn’t, and goes back to watching the stupid movie.

\--

“Nursing?”

Phil opens his mouth to say something, but can’t think of anything that isn’t awful.

“That… would be nice,” he finally says, careful not to say anything about whether it would be nice for Dan, specifically.

Dan must see something in his expression, because his hopeful look slowly dissolves.

“Nevermind. There’s too many people and I’m stupid,” he says.

“You’re not –”

“I’m _stupid,_ Phil,” he says, voice lilting and eyes going wide like he does when he’s sort of joking, but not really, but kind of – but mostly he just doesn’t want Phil to argue the point, so.

“You’re not stupid,” Phil says, anyways. “You just – wouldn’t be – um. The charts, I think, might be a lot.”

“Whatever.” He’s already back to scrolling, running his teeth over the edge of his lower lip like he does when he’s thinking. “Egyptology?” he says, without context, right as Phil’s finally focused on the project he’s meant to be working on.

“What?”

“Cell biology with a modern language.”

“Is that a dual –”

“Mathematics and philosophy?”

“Dan.”

“Software engineering,” Dan says instead of answering, with a note of finality.

“Really?”

“That’s not the last one. _Zoology_ with a modern language is the last one.”

“What – I have to ask – what modern language? Would you study modern... what language do koalas speak, Dan?”

That’s enough to get Dan to break, finally. He meets Phil’s eyes, wrinkling his nose with distaste. 

“You think the language is modern koala-ish?” he says, accusatory, like it’s not his fault for bringing it up in the first place. “Koala-ish, really?”

“That can’t be the real name. We don’t call English People-ish, Dan, that’s not how that – ”

“Phil,” he whines, “I need to pick a course and you’re only interested in figuring out if I can study how to talk to koalas.”

“I’m not! I’m just saying, that’s not how –”

“You _are._ How did you end up with an English degree, mate? Did you think you were majoring in an alien language?”

Phil kicks in the direction of his shins under the table. He mostly collides with the chair leg, but he definitely skims Dan’s foot in the scuffle, so it’s worth it. 

He does feel genuinely bad for a second when he hears Trout’s collar jangle as she raises her head to peer up at Dan, confused, until she sighs and flops back down.

“Even the dog is tired of your koala bullshit,” Dan mutters, kicking in Phil’s direction in search of revenge.

“Just – find something you’re interested in,” Phil says, breathless from wiggling some more to try to get out of the way Dan’s got both his legs pinned now, as punishment for his crimes.

“Like what,” Dan groans, leaning back to look at the ceiling, distracted enough by his own whining that Phil manages to wiggle free. He hops up while Dan isn’t looking and sits back on the chair in a pretzel, to prevent any further escapades.

“I don’t know. What did you want to be when you were a kid?”

Dan levels him with a look. His eyes trail down, for a second, making a face at the way Phil’s sitting now, but then he meets his eyes again.

“A sheep farmer,” he says, flatly.

“No, I mean like, an astronaut, or a fireman – you know?”

“A rich sheep farmer,” Dan counters. “A sheep farmer – get this – who could pay a vet to stick their arms up all the bumholes.”

Phil makes a face at that. “You’re so lucky that you’re pretty.”

“Oh?” Dan says, suddenly perking up. He’s so predictable.

“Yeah, because if you were any uglier and you brought up sheep fisting as much as you already do, I would dump you and drive you back to that farm myself.”

Dan frowns just long enough to make Phil’s heart stutter with worry, but then he cracks into a huge, goofy, crinkly-eyed smile.

“Your _mum_ loves fisting sheep,” Dan sing-songs, all cheerful. “And she loves when I bring it up at dinner. Maybe I’ll go live with her instead, since you’re such a prude.”

Phil doesn’t know what’s worse – the fact that Dan talks about sheep bumholes all the time, or that Kath _does_ think it’s funny, or that he’s brought up the horrible memory of that dinner conversation when Phil had finally managed to block it out.

“Leave Kath out of this. She only loves you because you look like the farmer boy she had a crush on in sixth form,” he says, petering off into a mumble as he realizes that he can’t remember if he’s told Dan this part of the story. He’s rewarded with a squawking sound and Dan going wide-eyed with glee, which probably means he hasn’t.

“Would you focus?” Phil says, instead of elaborating.

“I will not,” Dan says, but he dutifully turns his attention back to his laptop, still grinning like a goofball.

\--

Dan takes Trout for a walk while Phil tries to finish working. Or Trout takes Dan for a walk? Phil’s never entirely sure. 

By the time Phil goes to bed, Dan’s curled up on the couch with his laptop, headphones firmly on. Phil stops and carefully steps over Trout, leaning down so he can press a kiss to Dan’s hair.

“Hm?” Dan says, shoving one earpiece back.

“You two coming to bed soon?”

“Can’t sleep until I find something.”

“Are you working in the morning?”

“No, ‘m off tomorrow.” 

“Alright,” he says. Dan tips his head back for a proper kiss. Phil leans down to scratch Trout’s head, too, murmurs “you’ll herd him in there, right?” once Dan has his headphones back on and can’t hear them plotting against him.

\--

“Have you talked to your nan?” Phil says absently, stirring the eggs. 

He doesn’t particularly understand the way Dan communicates with his family. Dan doesn’t exactly offer it up as a conversation, and Phil’s too confused about the details to ask the right questions. He figures his nan is a safe bet, though, and talking with some frequency might help things, even if it’s not quite what Phil has with his mum. 

Dan throws Trout’s favorite squeaky duck down the hallway, for the millionth time. 

“I told her we got a dog. Sent her some pictures. She said she’s lovely.”

Phil blinks down at the eggs for a minute, turning away a little so Dan can’t catch the look on his face. 

“You didn’t tell her before?” he finally asks, after a minute, carefully searching for the right words.

“Wasn’t sure if it would work out,” Dan says, nonsensical, garbled a little by the sound of Trout scrabbling down the hallway and chomping happily at her duck. 

\--

“Did you tell gran that we’d got a dog?”

His mum’s once again left him on speaker while she wanders about. The static is driving him a little bit mad.

“Of course I told her,” she says, crackly across the distance. “Why? Was that meant to be a secret? She said Alfie told his mum to tell her you’d bought their lemon of a dog, anyways, so she only wanted to know Trout’s name as she didn’t remember.”

Phil goes silent, rattling that information around in his brain for a minute. He disappears long enough that his mum asks if he’s still there. It’s rich, he thinks, since he can hardly tell sometimes if she’s left him on the back of the couch to sit in silence while she goes to the shop.

“Hang on – so everyone knows everything? What – mum,” he finally says, vaguely petulant, “mum. What is _wrong_ with that village, seriously?”

She laughs.

“Well, they talk.”

“Did she say if – would you know – did she tell Mrs. Howell?”

“Dan’s?”

“Yeah.”

“I suppose – oh, wait, she did say, yes. She said Mrs. Howell asked her to ask me how Dan was getting on, so I suppose they must have talked about the dog, because Alfie and I had both talked with her about Trout by then.”

Phil groans under his breath.

“Why, child?”

“It’s – he’s just now told his nan that we got a dog, like it was news?”

She laughs, again, but there’s an edge of confusion behind it this time.

“Oh, the poor thing, he’s a bit behind the times, isn’t he?”

“I don’t understand how we’ve ended up in the middle of them, mum. It’s like he doesn’t know that everyone talks. You left ages ago and _you_ know that. Wait – oh, god, mum, how did you say he was getting on?”

She falls silent. He can hear her pottering around, making some clattering sound with something in the background.

“Well,” she says, careful. “I said he was alright, because you said he was alright, and – he seems alright, doesn’t he.”

Phil hums, vaguely. He’s suddenly overwhelmed by trying to remember what he’s said in the heat of the moment that might have slipped from his mum to Dan’s family, and by the number of people involved, and – well. Dan’s reluctance, too, if he’s entirely honest. He’s bewildered into silence, too worried now to say much else on the topic.

His mum gets him. They bicker, but they’re rarely on different wavelengths for long, somehow.

“Anyways,” she says, “did you want to hear about what your awful brother’s done this time?”

\--

He knows, now, when it’s a bad day. 

He’s always found out, eventually, but there’s something about hearing Trout’s collar jangle on the other side of the door as he pulls out his keys, about the way she noses at his shoes while he tugs them off in the entry. 

She leads him through the flat, through the door Dan always leaves open now so she can get up to wander about, even when he can’t. She hops up on the bed and curls up against Dan’s back, waits while Phil carefully brushes Dan’s mussed hair back and talks quietly until he’s lucid enough to know that they’re leaving to go for a walk. 

Phil hates leaving him, even to walk the dog, but – he’s grateful, too. Grateful that Dan found her, even if it was a bit of a saga, and grateful that she’s learned so quickly, and grateful that her patient little doggy face is there to meet him at the door before he has to go looking. She’s gentle with both of them even when the normal routine goes all to hell, and Phil makes sure to give her some of the leftover chicken for dessert, even if she doesn’t sit when he asks her to.

\--

He tries to go to bed quietly, later that night - but his electric toothbrush is so loud, and the bottle of painkillers rattles when he puts it on Dan’s bedside table, and Trout’s tags jingle as she puts herself to bed, and he trips over one of her godforsakenly noisy toys. She just looks at him, skeptical, instead of going after it, which is a small blessing.

He finally makes it under the covers. He stays deadly still, eyeing Dan for a minute to see if he’s restless at all. Dan sighs, but he’s not fidgeting like he does when he’s waking up, so Phil’s pretty sure he’s still dead to the world, after all that. He checks his alarm is on, tilting the phone to the side so the light won’t glow anywhere near Dan’s side, and then sets it and his glasses very gently on his bedside table. It’s cold, and he wants to curl up with Dan, but he can’t wake him any more than he maybe already has, so he rolls over and wraps an arm around his pillow, carefully still and carefully contained on his side of the bed.

“Loud,” Dan mumbles, after a minute.

“Sorry,” Phil says, automatically.

“Huh?”

“Why am I sorry?” Phil whispers into the dark, twisting so he can see the blurred smudges of Dan’s face.

“Hm,” Dan says. He flops a hand out to the side, vaguely patting around in Phil’s direction. He goes still for a moment, apparently asleep, and then starts back up, wiggling his fingers.

“Oh,” Phil replies, like they’re having a proper conversation. 

He scoots closer, shuffling clumsily across the sheets until Dan is tapping at his arm. His fingers trail down, wrapping around Phil’s wrist and pulling him in, until Phil is nearly pinned under him.

“You comfy?” Phil murmurs, once he’s settled.

“Warm,” is all Dan says in return, tugging the blankets closer around them.

\--

“I talked to someone at work,” Dan says from the entry. He’s trying to unclip Trout’s harness while she wiggles with excitement, which isn’t going terribly well. He always says she’s perfectly well behaved on the bus home, but Phil only ever sees this part, when she’s just thrilled to be off work herself, practically beside herself at the idea of eating the exact same dinner she gets every night.

“We’re home,” Dan starts saying to her, before Phil can reply. “We’re home! Yeah! In your house that you see every single day! This is so exciting!”

He finally gets her unclipped and untangled, and she bounds away, first to Phil to carefully inspect his hands for snacks, then for a sprint around the couch, then beelining down the hallway.

“I wish I was that excited about anything,” Dan sighs, watching her zoom off, but he smiles at Phil and comes over to give him a kiss hello.

“What were you saying before the tornado hit?”

“Uh?”

“About talking to someone at work.”

“Oh! Oh. I talked to some – to Adam, one of the guys who I ate lunch with that one time, I think I told you about him?”

Phil hums, sure he’s heard the name but vague on the specifics. “Yeah, okay. What’d you talk about?”

“He went to school for digital marketing, he said. He’s doing, like, the writing and making up campaigns and all that. The job Will would move me into if I stick around long enough, I guess. But no one ever really leaves, so – I dunno, like? I could go to school and make the jump somewhere else, if I had a degree?”

“Oh,” Phil says. “I suppose, yeah. That’s how Lucy ended up at my office, I think.”

Dan looks up from wherever his gaze had wandered while he was talking. He studies Phil’s face, for a second, until his own settles into a frown.

“What are you not saying,” he says, flat.

Phil hesitates, looking back at his laptop screen like it’ll have an answer. 

“Is that what you want to do?” he finally asks. “Or is it just – like – because it’s comfortable, you know? Since you’re already there?”

He’s settled in well enough, but Dan hadn’t been particularly thrilled with the idea of working in an office at all, or part time, or in a digital marketing agency. _I’m just the assistant to the guy who’s the assistant to the guy who actually decides what ads people will scroll past on Instagram,_ he’d muttered over dinner after his first day. 

Dan fidgets, absently fussing with the cuffs on his shirt.

“I don’t know, honestly,” he says quietly.

“I mean. Sorry. Do you like it, now?”

“I like the – oh, Christ,” he huffs, cutting himself off. “I like that it’s indoors, mate. I like the coffee machine and being able to take sick days.”

Phil smiles a little.

“Is that it?”

There’s a racket starting up in the bedroom, which can only be one thing.

Dan sighs. “I’ll think about it,” he says, craning his head to listen down the hall. 

“That’ll do, then,” he calls, in the odd lilt he always uses, and Trout comes trotting obediently back to him after a moment’s hesitation, flopping at his feet. She’s only trailing a bit of toilet paper today.

\--

“I like the people,” Dan says, later, tucking his cold nose into Phil’s neck.

“All of the people?”

“There’s only twenty, Phil.”

“On Earth? Where’d the rest go?”

Dan groans. “At work, I mean. I like – I think I like talking to them, actually. I like thinking about what makes people want to do things. I like that Trout can come with me and sleep under my desk, which I guess she couldn’t at most places, but maybe if I stay with smaller companies? Or if I worked for a place that just advertised dog stuff. Which actually I would be good at, I think. We could start that, and Martyn could do the business stuff.”

He finally goes quiet, absently running a thumb over the thin skin on the inside of Phil’s bicep.

“Sorry, that’s a lot of words.” he says, eventually, with a little laugh. Phil’s smiling up at the ceiling, but Dan can’t see that from where he’d pressed up against Phil’s chest.

“No,” he says, running his palm over the planes of Dan’s back. “No, I think I’d like that.”

\--

Dan’s weirdly apathetic about his applications, in a way that Phil is starting to find unnerving.

“It’s fine,” he says, for the fifth night in a row. “I’ll do it tomorrow.”

He’s been to see the brain doctor, and done the dishes, and taken Trout to the park, and gotten his refills from the pharmacy, and put the laundry in, and taken the laundry out.

He seems – fine, is the thing. Like he _has_ got it handled, and maybe Phil should just trust him with this, after so many months of hovering over his every move.

“Just sit with me and work on it for a minute.”

Dan does, sort of. He sits, and opens his laptop, and looks like he might focus for half a second.

Phil looks up, after a few minutes, when he realizes that Dan is in no way looking at his own screen. Dan frowns at him, and then down at his own laptop, and then at Phil’s hands.

“What?”

“It’s – your fingers are so loud,” Dan finally says, like it’s a challenge somehow. 

“Okay?”

Dan stands up in a rush, swiping his laptop off the table, and leaves for the bedroom with Trout trailing at his feet.

\--

Phil finds him, later, sitting at the little table they’d bought to use as a makeshift desk. 

“Dinner’s nearly done,” he says. He wraps his arms around Dan’s shoulders and leans in close to see what he’s looking at. 

“You’ve set a timer?”

“Yeah,” he says. He’s seen how much Dan tries to avoid talking about this. “Proud of you,” he adds, pushing just a little.

“Thanks.”

“How’s it going?”

“It’s great,” he says, but he’s stiff under Phil’s arms when he shrugs, like he’s forgotten how to move. 

“Yeah?” 

“Yeah.”

“You’ve got all your references and the exam paperwork sorted out?”

That’s what does it, Phil realizes as it’s happening. It’s like a shell cracks, and Dan is suddenly squirming, blurting out that he doesn’t, he _doesn’t,_ he has nothing, because he barely went to school sometimes, and he’s only really worked for his own family. He’s never joined a club in his life, never really studied, never really looked into what he would need to do when it was the time to do it. He’s only just now dared to want anything other than what was in front of him. He never had the deep-set anxiety about exams that Phil had at 14, 15, 16, never knew there was any reason to do better than _good enough._

Phil is bewildered, sometimes, by how he can go from deathly still to trembling like this so quickly, like he’s been shot out of a canon.

Dan goes a bit boneless in the funny way he sometimes does, like it’s too much effort to stay in a chair and not on the ground. Phil spins the office chair as he goes, so he can slither to the floor and not end up under the desk. 

He pulls his knees tightly into his chest, once he hits the floor, tipping his head forward to rest on his bony knees. Trout plops down at his side, poking her nose at Dan’s hand until he curls his fingers around her collar. 

Phil’s never entirely sure what to do with this part. Dan has sometimes wanted to ride it out alone, where he can squirm until it stops feeling like his skin is on fire. Sometimes he wants to crawl underneath Phil’s skin and hide somewhere in his rib cage, boxed in entirely. Sometimes he’s bossy about it, and sometimes he can’t seem to make sense of it himself, reaching for Phil and pushing him away in equal measure.

“D’you want a cuddle?”

“No,” he says, muffled. “No, sorry.”

“D’you want me to talk about how great you are and how the university would be lucky to have you?” Phil offers.

Dan laughs a little at that, but he’s still shivering. “No. Just don’t wanna think about it at all, actually.”

Phil gets up, instead. He goes to the bedside drawer on Dan’s side of the bed, rummaging around. He looks back, for a moment, and Trout’s still sitting patiently with Dan, but she’s tracking Phil’s every move with total focus.

He goes back. Trout lets out a soft _boof_ under her breath, like she’s trying not to startle Dan but also can’t help herself. 

“Wiggly,” Dan mutters, but Phil thinks he hears a laugh behind it.

“Trout, square up,” Phil says. He tries to mimic the way Dan says it, but she just stares up at him, shifting from side to side just a bit, lifting each paw and generally wiggling as much as she can without _technically_ leaving her spot. “Trout? Square up, please?”

Dan’s shoulders jerk, and Phil’s pretty damn sure this time that it’s not just the shakes this time, based on the little huffing sound he makes. “Square _up,”_ he says.

Even with Dan’s words coming out garbled into his knees, she gets it. She plants her feet in line with Dan’s shoulder, and he leans into her side, snorting when she turns her head to sneak in a little lick to his forehead. Phil finally opens his hand, careful to get it in front of Dan’s knees first so she doesn’t move too much to grab it.

“You’re such a good girl,” he says cheerfully, plopping back down across from the two of them.

“You’re a horrible teen, actually,” Dan mumbles. Trout’s too busy licking every molecule of crumbs off her own lips to notice either of them. 

Phil pulls his phone out, after a minute. 

“Did you know when you die, you can get yourself turned into a blood popsicle for an overheated lion to eat?”

“What?”

“Oh, not really. I misread that. Oh, this person thinks –”

“Phil, you thought you could get turned into –”

“– that dogs lick us because they’re trying to get to the middle.”

_“– a blood popsicle?”_

“I wasn’t looking that closely,” Phil says, absently. He scrolls for another minute. “Oh, this person makes a good point: another day has passed and I haven’t used the pythagoras theorem. That’s true.”

Dan hasn’t quite surfaced, but he’s turned his head a bit so he can glare at Phil. Probably so Phil can hear his moaning about twitter inaccuracies better, too, but that’s never stopped Phil before.

“You think dogs lick us because –”

“I didn’t say I think that. I’m just saying _someone_ suggested it.”

“Wh –” Dan splutters, “why are you following these people?”

“I’m not. They’re just around.”

“I have never run into blood popsicles on Twitter, and here you are –”

“It’s the algorithm,” Phil says sagely.

“Oh, it’s the algorithm,” Dan parrots back, increasingly petulant. “The algorithm thinks you’re a monster who loves blood popsicles and cannibal dogs.”

“They’re not cannibals if they’re eating people. That’s just eating people, which is kind of fine, if you’re not people. It’s not that weird. It’s like how we eat chicken, if you think about it.”

Dan sighs. Phil’s right, and Dan doesn’t like admitting that, so he just sighs, closing his eyes again and rubbing his cheek against Trout’s shoulder.

“I was having a moment,” he says, eventually.

“And?”

“And my dog’s tired of me.”

Phil softens. Trout’s panting happily, but she’s wagging her tail a little and glancing up at Phil like she’s a child waiting to get released from school, just unsure who’s going to ring the bell. Dan’s not quite shaking anymore. His tight clutch on his legs has loosened, and he’s just sort of slumped forward against them, now, like it would take too much energy to sit upright. Phil supposes it probably would.

“That’ll do,” Dan says, quietly, finally dropping his hand from her collar and instead scratching her behind the ears. She doesn’t leave his side for the first minute, just leaning happily into the attention, until Dan murmurs “hey, where’s your squirrel?” and she springs away, nails tapping-tapping away down the hall as she goes to find it.

“She’s good,” Phil says, watching her go.

“She is.”

“Nap for a bit?”

“Yeah,” Dan says, softly. He takes Phil’s hand when he offers, carefully untangling his long legs. He lets Phil wrap his arms around him and hold him for a minute, before he says _sorry, just tired now,_ and wiggles away to sink into the bed, burrowing back into Phil’s arms as soon as he joins in. 

\--

“Oh,” Dan says under his breath.

He chatters to himself aimlessly all the time while he’s scrolling around. Phil doesn’t particularly notice anymore, until Dan starts drumming his fingers on his laptop.

Phil looks up, quizzical. “Yeah?”

“Um,” Dan starts. “Manchester Met?”

“Oh. Unconditional?”

Dan gives him a look. “They’ve got all my exams already. It’s conditional on me not keeling over.”

Phil goes quiet for a minute, trying to connect the dots between his own vague memories of getting offers, with the things his school told him, with the rules now, with Dan’s situation.

“Oh. Oh, right. So… is that where you’re going?”

“No. I mean, maybe. Yes?” he tries. He’s twisting his fingers in the collar of his shirt, rubbing a thumb over the fabric automatically like he doesn’t know he’s doing it. “There’s still the others, so. I’m not, like, committed to this one.”

Phil tries to school his face into something that’s – not what it’s doing now. Not the look he’s giving Dan as he runs through the other options, heart beating at the idea of packing up and moving to London or to Birmingham or whatever, or worse, watching Dan leave and move alone. 

“I mean, it’s – just in –” Dan starts.

“Of course,” Phil says at the same time, too cheerful, voice going high and loud and funny. He winces. There’s a horrifying number of moving parts that would have to line up, somehow, but he dreads being the one to box Dan in. He’s just as horrified at the idea of making Dan’s world smaller.

“– case,” Dan finishes. He’s smiling sheepishly, hopeful and worried at the same time.

\--

Phil’s pretty sure that he recognizes the particular sound of Dan’s command + R keys by now. 

He still mumbles out a Wikipedia fact here and there, and sometimes he sends Phil random things he’s found on his hesitant journey through the wilds of twitter. Mostly he just sits there, though, staring blankly at the screen, hitting refresh every few minutes.

“How’s it going?” Phil finally asks, weeks in. 

Dan hasn’t said much since the Manchester Met offer came through. Sometimes he curls around Phil and carefully murmurs something about moving, or blurts out that there’s an event in Middlesbrough that they could go to, in the fall, if they happened to live there, but – that’s been the extent of it, really.

Dan shrugs. “Um,” he says, vague. “I… London Met said yes?”

“Oh. You didn’t say anything?”

Phil’s not – upset, exactly. Mostly surprised, he figures, that Dan’s mentioned the health status of his new twitter friend’s cat, but didn’t feel the need to mention that he got into a university on the other end of the country.

Dan shrugs again. He has a funny way of it, sometimes, where it’s like his whole body goes entirely askew. He absently rubs at Trout’s head, sucking the edge of his lower lip between his teeth.

“No,” he says, quiet. “I suppose not.”

“The rest of them?” Phil tries.

“Salford said no.”

“I’m sorry, love.” He starts like he’s going to move towards Dan, but then he sees his carefully constructed posture, the way he’s got a finger tucked underneath Trout’s collar now. His laptop is still on his lap, but he’s not even looking at it, too absorbed in picking at a hangnail. Phil settles back in to his own spot, propping his chin on his hand.

“Um. Birmingham City, too, and then Teesside hasn’t said anything.”

“City said no?” Phil says, trying to remember when Dan’s quiet stream of ideas stopped on that one.

“Can you try to sound less surprised,” Dan mumbles.

Phil’s surprised into laughing. He knows, logically, that Dan hasn’t forgotten how they met, but it’s difficult to talk about sometimes, difficult to reference that other universe he was living in.

“Sorry. I just mean – you’re good, and they should’ve let you in. D’you have a favorite?”

Dan looks up, finally meeting his eyes. “I think – well, not Teesside. London’s – there’s parts of that that would be nice, I guess. But I think it would be, like, I don’t know. Too far from your family, you know?”

Phil does his absolute best to hold in the sigh of relief. “Yeah, it’s a ways.”

“So, that just leaves Manchester, I guess.” He gives Phil a wry smile. “I know you’d be thrilled to stay.”

“Oh,” Phil says, voice catching in his throat suddenly. “I don’t want it – I don’t – it’s not like – you shouldn’t pick that because of me. If you want to go –”

“Nope.”

“You should go to London, if that’s –”

 _“London,”_ Dan repeats, face scrunching into a horrified look. 

Phil cracks into a laugh, again, even though it trails off as he realizes he doesn’t quite know what part he’s laughing at. 

“You’re sure?”

Dan nods, scuffing his feet back and forth along the rug below the couch. “I’m sure.”

\--

“What sort of cake do you like on your birthday?” Kath asks over dinner. They’d fallen into an awkward silence after his dad had asked where Dan had got in, and then whether Manchester Met was a real university, these days, and then whether digital marketing was a proper industry or just a newfangled trend. Dan had been polite as always, but he’d gone quiet after. Phil had shot his brother a panicked look.

“It’s better ranked than Salford,” Martyn had supplied, almost but not quite entirely unhelpful. It was enough to get a glare from both of their parents, and for Kath to find them a new topic of conversation, at least.

No one answers her cake question. Phil’s not entirely sure who it’s even directed at. Once in a while she gets a touch desperate and asks him and Martyn what they’d prefer, in hopes that she might get out of making the exact same boring cakes that they’ve always asked for. She always looks a bit crestfallen when they don’t give her the correct answer.

“Dan,” she says gently, startling him out of whatever silent universe he’s gone to. “What cake do you like the best, love?”

“Oh. Um. We’ve always just – I think my nan got one from Morrisons? The chocolate one, usually, if they weren’t out.”

“Oh, well,” Kath says. Phil can already see the gears whirring as she breezes past that. He’s never even heard that as an option in their house, but he knows chocolate cake from Morrisons isn’t the correct answer that his mum is looking for. “Is chocolate your favorite, really? I mean, it’s nice, but I could make something properly odd, like your – like your Phil won’t let me make, since he’s so old fashioned.”

“Mum, I think –” Phil starts, about to say that Dan must be going out with his old uni friends or something, or going home at least, not celebrating with Phil’s parents.

He glances to the side at the last moment, and snaps his mouth shut when he catches Dan’s expression.

“That would be lovely, actually, Mrs. Lester.”

Phil glances from him to his mum to his brother, bewildered. Kath’s beaming, and Martyn’s got a look on his face that Phil literally could not put a name to for a million pounds. He can’t tell if Dan’s being polite or honest or what, but – that doesn’t look like his polite face. He looks genuinely pleased, which is just slightly horrifying, if Phil thinks about it too much.

“Grapefruit?” his mum is saying as Phil surfaces from his spiral. He’s missed a lot, apparently. She sounds _delighted._

Dan’s carefully poking at his dinner like he only does at Phil’s parents house, like they’re going to kick him out for any minor misstep.

“I had one at – um – what is it? There’s that cafe by the church, back home? We went when I was – well, anyways. It was really good, and I guess I didn’t – um.” Phil looks over at his mum again, watching how she patiently waits through Dan’s stumbling sentences, then at Dan, who’s suddenly willing to talk like this, in a way he struggles with even when it’s just Phil. 

“It just – it was really, like, tart, so it cut through the sweetness, I think?” Dan continues, finally settling on a train of thought that’ll work. “I think it was – maybe ginger frosting?”

“You actually are my favorite son, Daniel,” she says seriously, and then laughs when Martyn and Phil both respond with indignant shouting.

\--

Phil couldn’t say what time it was if his life depended on it. 

Dan closed the blinds at some point, which could have been a day ago or maybe it’s only been an hour. The only evidence he has that minutes have passed is that he’s been miserable in a variety of ways, he thinks, and probably not at the same time. Sometimes Trout comes in and hops into bed with him, curling up in a little ball at his side. Dan’s taken her collar tags off at some point, worried about the jangling, so he never hears her sneak in, and doesn’t always notice when she sneaks back out to go check in with Dan. Dan follows her in and out, sometimes, and Phil can’t tell if Trout’s herding him in, or if they’re taking turns, or what’s going on.

He hears a soft thump from the doorframe, and then Trout’s weight on the bed. It feels funny, for a minute, when her paws are circling around and around on the bed before she finally settles into a heavy little lump, pressed up against his back. 

“Good girl,” he whispers into the dark, after a minute. He can’t tell if she hears him.

Dan comes in at some point. He sits on Phil’s other side, on the edge of the bed, and carefully brushes Phil’s hair off his forehead. 

Dan doesn’t like to talk until Phil does, but Phil can’t think of any words to say in any order that would make sense. 

Phil cringes when Dan’s stupid jangly alarm goes off, breaking the silence.

“Sorry, sorry,” Dan whispers, fumbling it out of his pocket.

“‘S ‘kay,” Phil croaks, rolling onto his front so he can press his forehead into the mattress, squeezing his eyes shut.

Dan shifts like he’s going to get up, but then he settles back down almost immediately. 

“Hey, Trout?” he starts, not quite whispering but trying to stay quiet, “Magic?”

Phil distantly feels her leave. The pounding in his head is making him feel like he’s not quite attached to his own body. He vaguely registers that Dan’s got a hand resting on his back, and that he’s more still than Phil’s ever seen him, but that fact keeps drifting in and out.

There’s a soft tap, and then the bedside drawer opening and closing. Every little sound is fucking with Phil’s anxiety, making him want to flee even though he’s hardly managed to move more than a few inches since Dan left him in bed the first time.

“Hey,” Dan whispers, with another tapping sound. “There’s paracetamol here if you want it. You can take more.”

“Wh–?” Phil tries, garbled into the mattress. He rolls his head to the side. “Who?”

“Trout?”

“Trout?” Phil croaks, blinking his creaky eyes open and staring at the blurry blob of a dog by Dan’s side.

Dan doesn’t seem to think it’s a real question, or he doesn’t get it. Phil can’t make out his expression, but he goes silent like he’s not sure what Phil’s saying.

“When?”

“When what?” Dan says, hesitantly, like he thinks he’s pushing it too far.

“When’d you t’ch her?” Phil mumbles, eyes falling closed again.

“Oh! Oh. Sorry. A while ago, when you were at work. She doesn’t always get the right bottle, but, uh, she tries. One time she brought the shampoo.”

“Huh.”

Dan runs his hand over Phil’s back, smoothing out his sleep shirt. His nerves are on fire and the featherlight contact makes him squirm in confusion, but he knows that Dan’s trying to be gentle, trying to reassure him before he leaves again. 

\--

Dan snatches the roll of cookie dough out of the cooler when he thinks Phil’s too distracted with looking for the right type of butter. He gets caught immediately, but he flashes Phil a wide smile and that’s the end of that discussion.

\--

He ends up curled on the floor in the kitchen after dinner. The oven light’s on, and Trout’s hovering at his side. Once in awhile she leans in and sneaks in a very careful lick to Dan’s face. She keeps glancing around between the counters and Dan and Phil, when he wanders by, like she can’t sort out where the snacks are going to come from. 

“Can I take them out?” Dan asks, when Phil passes by for the millionth time, still looking for his gloves so he can put them by his work bag.

“Timer hasn’t gone off.”

“I’m hungry,” Dan groans from the floor, while Phil’s pawing through the random shit they’ve left on the counter.

“We _just_ ate dinner.”

“So did Trout, and if she doesn’t get a biscuit in the next three minutes she’s gonna die.”

“Did she tell you that?”

Phil finally finds the gloves and chucks them in the vague direction of his bag.

“Yes,” Dan says seriously. “That’s exactly what she said to me. Nice to know that the dog is looking out for me even though you won’t.”

Phil cracks at the combination of Dan’s serious face and the words he’s saying.

“Fine, get your liquid cookies, you freak,” he says, trying his best to sound grumpy. Dan’s beaming up at him, now, so Phil nudges him with his foot until he gets up. Trout’s wiggling like mad. She tries to stand under Dan’s feet while he pulls the cookies out, narrowly dodging whacking her in the head with the hot pan when she pops up out of nowhere to try to sneak in a nibble.

“Get out of my kitchen!” he squawks.

“Get out of Phil’s kitchen,” Phil tells her as she darts away, nearly taking him out at the kneecaps. She’s never listened to him once about anything, but it makes Dan laugh again.

“I like you,” Dan says, poking experimentally at the cookies on the edge with a spatula.

Phil laughs. His face is starting to hurt from how much he’s been smiling today, but he supposes there’s worse problems to have. 

“Oh, you only like me?”

Dan shrugs, grabbing a fork and trying to scrape the horrifically undercooked bit of warm cookie batter he’s got balanced on the spatula onto a plate. “Yeah. Love’s for chumps, but you’re alright.”

They get the cookies on the plate well enough. Or, well: they, as in mostly Dan, while Phil hovers around with no particular plan to actually help. Cookies… as in the stack of limp sugar that’s already solidifying into one horrible blob. Dan puts two forks on the side of the plate before he takes them to the living room, and for a moment Phil is gripped with fear that his mum is going to knock on the door and announce that she’s ashamed of him.

Dan puts the plate down and curls up on the couch, pulling his laptop into his lap. Phil tucks himself into his side. They both end up squirming aimlessly while the laptop takes its sweet time booting up. Phil yanks the blanket over them, and then decides it’s too warm; it takes him ages to arrange it perfectly. Dan – has apparently forgotten what it’s like to have his laptop be off when he opens it. He fusses with his hair, presses kisses to Phil’s temple, taps his fingers uselessly over the keyboard while he waits. Phil isn’t quite sure what to do with himself; not sure whether he should be this close, or if Dan would want space but just isn’t saying so. He can’t quite bring himself to ask.

He plays on his phone, instead, while Dan tries to pull up the website and whines about their internet service for the millionth time. He figures it’s a happy medium, maybe, if he’s there beside him but not quite looking.

“Should I do it?” Dan says softly after a minute, gone still against Phil’s side. 

He looks up, and Dan’s got his mouse over the button, his fingers hovering over the trackpad.

“Yeah,” he says, surprising himself with how steady he sounds. “Yeah, do it.”

Dan screws his eyes shut and whacks at the trackpad, comically violent. Phil laughs, watching while the next page loads.

“Hey, you’re good now.”

Dan finally opens his eyes, turned so he can look at Phil instead of the screen, smiling wide and giddy and more than a little nervous. Phil leans across and plants a kiss on him, laughing into the space between them when Dan’s lips keep pulling into a smile instead.

“Manchester?” Dan says hesitantly when they pull apart. Phil can’t help laughing again, at the idea that it’s a question now. He feels a little hysterical.

“Manchester,” he says. He plants one more on the corner of Dan’s mouth, just so he can feel his smile again.

\--

“She’s not an assistance dog, is all.”

Phil leans to peer over the edge of the couch, down to where Trout is politely waiting. 

“She assists you, though?”

“Yeah, but not like, properly. Not like a guide dog or something.”

“She helps, though? Dan, in the dictionary, if you look up – ”

“It’s not physical,” Dan says, vaguely waving his hand to indicate, like, the entire idea of time and space and physical existence. “Whatever. I don’t wanna talk about this. Can we play Mario Kart?”

Phil relents for all of a minute.

“She _does_ assist, though, like –”

“Can we play Mario Kart?” Dan repeats, definitely interrupting. Phil makes a face, but Dan just stares back, deadpan.

“Yes. Oh, wait, no. No? Absolutely no Mario Kart until you – uh – until you ask for an exception so your dog can go to uni and wear the little hat at graduation.”

Dan glares at him, and then stares at the wall, and then at his own fidgeting hands, frown going deeper and deeper every minute.

“I don’t want her to have one,” he says, an obvious lie.

“It’s just a hat. She doesn’t have to wear it, really, I just think –”

“The exception, Phil.”

“Dan, it’s just sending an email, they might –”

“I don’t want them to say yes.”

“You’re full of shit,” Phil says, flat. 

“I don’t.”

“Why not?”

Dan shrugs, still fiddling and refusing to look Phil in the eye.

“She’d have to wear the stupid jacket.”

“So you’re – it’s – all this is because of the sartorial choices?”

Dan wrinkles his nose in a way that usually means he doesn’t appreciate Phil’s English degree right now. “She’s monochromatic,” he says after a minute, sullen.

Phil doesn’t mean to kick _that_ hard, but he can’t quite see where Dan’s legs are when they’re buried under the blanket, and he doesn’t want to get put on legs arrest just for a feint, so.

Dan yelps, diving back towards Phil’s side and nabbing both of his ankles anyways.

“You’re _horrible,”_ he says, adjusting his grip every time Phil flails.

“What’s the real reason?”

Dan hesitates, absently rubbing the pad of his thumb over Phil’s ankle bone. “I – like, she’s a dog, and I don’t think she would like sitting in a classroom all day, you know?”

Phil carefully does not point out that Trout sits with Dan at his desk most days, and that classes are shorter than a whole day in the office, and that they would have to walk between the buildings anyways.

“Your problem, here,” Phil says, slowly, “is that your dog – your working dog – would have to work too much?”

“Don’t say it like that.”

“Like what?”

Dan huffs. “I don’t know, Phil, like the way you say things. Stop saying… things.” He waves his hands in a circle to indicate Phil’s whole deal.

“Oh?”

“Just generally.” Dan’s trying his absolute best to keep a serious face, but Phil knows him well enough to see that his mouth’s gone all twisted like it does when he’s trying not to smile.

“So – you think I’m not allowed to talk if I’m too correct.”

Dan’s chin dips forward in what might be the start of a nod, but then he reels back, going comically double chinned, with a dramatic scowl on his face. He freezes there, staring at Phil, looking like he might get swallowed up by his couch blanket any minute now.

Phil rolls his eyes and grabs the stupid controllers off of the end table.

\---

“I just don’t want people to think I’m like, a brain cripple. Ugh,” Dan continues.

Or – wait. Wait? He _sounds_ like he’s continuing something, but when Phil puts the words together, it doesn’t seem like it’s still the conversation they were having earlier, about whether an otter could live in an apartment or not. 

Well, actually: Phil’s pretty sure he didn’t tune out for that long, but maybe he did, and maybe Dan’s just been having this conversation the whole time without him?

“What,” he says, voice going funny like it does sometimes when he’s forgotten how to speak in People again.

“Like, I don’t know. Like, defective or something – you know what I mean? When people look at you and they’re so – they’re just looking _through_ you. You’ve felt that, right?”

Phil gapes up at him. He doesn’t want to tell his boyfriend that he wasn’t listening, because obviously he was trying very hard. On the other hand, he doesn’t want Dan to walk away thinking that he _was_ listening, when he definitely wasn’t and maybe Phil did make some affirming noises when Dan asked to get a betta fish, or something, and he won’t know until Dan returns to the house with the betta fish, and then Phil will be in charge of parenting the fish, and Phil didn’t even know what he was saying, which is, legally –

“Have you heard the last three minutes?”

Phil keeps staring. He thinks, briefly, that his brain has been scrambled with a spatula.

“Uh,” he says, eloquent. He tries to bring Dan’s face back into focus.

Dan’s smiling, dimple gone comically deep on one side and not quite on the other.

“How was Jupiter?”

“I didn’t get more stupider,” Phil mumbles back, automatically, face suddenly flushing hot as he realizes what’s coming out of his mouth. 

Dan makes a loud honking sound that might be a laugh or might just be surprise. Phil’s never quite sure what it means, but Dan wraps an arm around his shoulders and pulls him in, planting a kiss on his temple, and Phil figures that maybe that’s okay.

\--

“What about this one?” Phil says.

Dan’s already off, trailing his hand along every single sweater. He slows his roll a little bit when he hears Phil, but he doesn’t quite stop. They’ve been criss-crossing aimlessly around the store for ages, and Phil’s about this close to lying down in the middle of the gross linoleum in protest.

He puts the one in his hands back on the shelf and hurries to catch up. 

“Do you have an idea of what you want?” he says, nearly breathless.

“No,” Dan says, quietly.

“Are – is – uh, is there anything in this store you’ve liked?”

Dan keeps walking. “The blue one,” he finally says, but without much conviction.

“Should we go back for it?”

“I don’t want it to be obvious.”

“What?”

“I don’t want _it_ to be obvious,” Dan repeats.

He reaches to grab at Dan’s hand and is barely surprised when it disappears instead. 

“What don’t you want to be – what? What can’t be obvious?”

Dan waves his hand in a vague motion of _everything,_ like that’s going to help Phil figure it out somehow. Which – it does, a little bit, but he can’t understand what he’s supposed to do if the problem is everything on earth. The sweater section is blurring by, too fast for either of them to look.

“Can you slow down?”

“No.”

“Okay.” He follows Dan clear across most of the department store, weaving through the shoes, through the belts, somehow back into the men’s shirts again. 

Dan disappears down a side aisle, suddenly. He beelines for one they’d already looked at, earlier, already carefully running his fingertips over it by the time Phil catches up.

“Get this one,” Phil says, trying to keep the impatience out of his voice.

“I don’t want it.”

“Dan, you’ve come back to touch it three times.”

Dan shrugs, head wobbling side to side in a funny weaving motion. “It’s expensive.”

“It’s not that much. I’ll buy it. I don’t care. Please can we go get chips, I’m dying, actually.”

Dan finally looks up, and Phil – can’t pinpoint what it is, but god does he look like he’s straining at the edges right now. 

He softens, even though he’s pretty sure that Dan can hear his stomach gurgling impatiently anyways, like it hasn’t gotten the memo.

“It’s a good shirt. It’ll last.”

“I don’t – it’s not – like – there’s just –” he starts. His forehead creases in frustration.

“Hey,” Phil says, softly.

“I don’t want to look like – I don’t – whatever. I don’t want to look like me.”

“Okay?”

“I don’t want to _not_ look like me. I don’t want people to see me, and I don’t want them to get the wrong idea, and I don’t want to be boring and invisible and stupid, and I don’t know _what_ I look like, and we can’t even afford this store, and –”

“Breathe?” he tries. 

He can’t even remember the last time they went out shopping like this, together. Mostly he’s gone and found things on his own – plain dark t-shirts to match the ones Dan’s always had, the new jacket when he realized that Dan’s was littered with patches that were leaking rain, proper pyjamas, socks, pants, jeans in guesstimated sizes. Straightforward things, mostly. 

Dan had always thanked him, and never commented much on what Phil brought home. The bright lights at the shops had been too much for him for months, and then the noises, and then just the idea of being outside the apartment. 

Phil’s hit with how useless he is, right now, when Dan’s here in front of him in a public place, shaking with frustration, without his dog and overwhelmed by the store itself and too rattled to let Phil touch him. _Cross this off the list,_ he thinks to himself, distantly.

“ – it’s not even practical,” Dan continues, “to have a shirt that’s not even – it’s fucking _thin.”_

Phil blinks. _It’s not a fucking farm flannel you twit,_ he thinks but has the good sense not to say.

“We’re going to get chips now,” Phil says, slowly.

“I haven’t found anything, I haven’t even tried –”

“Nope. We’re going to get chips.”

“I have to –”

“We’re going to go get chips,” he repeats. Dan’s properly glaring at him now. Phil finds himself crossing his arms, tilting his chin up, suddenly cocky now that he’s made up his mind.

_“Phil.”_

“Yep. Phil’s going to get chips.”

Dan takes in a slow breath, letting it out through his teeth. “So we came here for nothing.”

“Nope, we came here to get chips.”

“We can get chips at home, you monster.”

“I wanted adventure chips,” he says, raising his eyebrows like he’s got a real point, smiling a little even though Dan’s expression doesn’t change a bit. He pitter-patters his fingers over his heart. “This boy _loves_ his adventure chips.” 

\--

“What about this one?” he says, between loud slurps of his milkshake. _(You’re going to give yourself the shits,_ Dan had muttered gloomily, but Phil had given him a wide, vaguely maniacal grin, and got rewarded with a smile back, so – that was worth it.)

Dan’s at his side, now, close enough that he’s gently bumping his arm against Phil’s. They’ve been moving slowly from spot to spot, carefully picking through every damn thing in the store.

“Don’t like red.”

“The navy, I meant. I know that.” 

Dan digs it out from where Phil points, holding it up so he can look, and then in front of himself so Phil can. It just looks soft, and warm enough, like Dan could wear it to work without fussing that it’s too hot in the office or too cold at the bus stop. 

“You’re not just saying I should get it so you can steal it?”

Phil hums, noncommittal. “It’s nice.”

Dan turns it over and over in his hands, for a minute, staring at every possible angle. Phil isn’t even sure what he’s looking for, but whatever.

“You think people wear this to uni?” he finally says.

“I think you could wear it to uni.” 

“That’s not actually an answer,” Dan says, but he’s got a shy smile on his face, and he tucks it in the crook of his elbow before they move on.

\--

“This looks stupid,” Dan starts saying out of the blue. 

“I look stupid.” 

“These boots are stupid.” 

He’s relentless about it. It gets worse when they go out, which – they’re trying to do more, but god does Dan’s muttering make Phil a little irrational sometimes.

 _I’m going to climb into that big tree and I won’t come back,_ he says under his breath one afternoon when he thinks Dan isn’t listening.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“Have you noticed one of my eyeballs has gone funny? It looks stupid now.” Dan continues, like Phil didn’t just threaten to leave the earth for good.

He hasn’t noticed the funny eyeball, but they’ve had variations on this discussion for weeks now.

“It looks fine,” Phil says, like he always does. He’s lost the conviction he had earlier in the month. Now it comes out like a recitation.

“You have to say that. You like me. It still looks stupid to everyone else.”

Phil’s – caught off guard, sometimes, by what he’s willing to say. They can argue until the cows come home when Dan accuses _him_ of thinking that Dan’s dense, or odd, or not right somehow. He hasn’t figured out what to do, though, when Dan decides that the world is after him like this.

\--

“Hey,” Phil says. He’s been rolling it around his head for most of dinner, and he thinks Dan’s already noticed that he hasn’t really said any other words all evening.

“Um. When you went to uni, was it like – bad?”

“Other than the part where I dropped out?”

“Yeah, like… I don’t know. The people. Were they bad?”

“No.”

“Okay,” he says, slowly. “You just seem worried, is all.”

Dan shrugs, taking another bite and thinking for a minute. “I just want it to go well. Not – not like the last time, I mean. I want it to be different.”

“Oh.” He supposes that does sort of follow some odd logic. He’s not really one for big changes, if he can help it, but – Dan seems to enjoy them, sometimes, in a way Phil can’t quite make sense of.

\---

“I don’t know if I like this,” Dan says one night. He’s curled around Trout, face pressed against her neck, trying to breathe through another round. 

“Is anxiety not fun?” Phil says. It’s a weak joke, but he’s exhausted, and Dan can’t sleep, and he just wants to find the crack where he can get through. 

Dan snorts, but it doesn’t seem to help. “I just want to be, like, tired again.”

Phil doesn’t – he can’t – it’s like he short circuits, for a second, thinking for a moment that that silent, exhausted Dan could come back. That Dan would want that, and maybe it would be better, somehow, to wither into himself and forget everything for days on end, instead of shaking through round after round of whatever this is.

“Sorry,” Dan mumbles into the silence Phil’s left him. “Not really. You had to take care of me.”

“That’s fine.”

They’ve argued about this part enough that Dan falls silent. 

“You could try changing your meds,” Phil says eventually.

“Tired of that.”

“Okay.”

“First dog helped,” Dan finally mumbles, nonsensical.

Phil blinks. He scrubs his eyes, like that’s going to help his hearing somehow. “Yeah?”

“Get a second one,” Dan says. His voice has gone funny and soft, like he’s already imagining it.

“You want… a second dog?”

Dan shrugs, still tucked into Trout’s side. 

“One for every type of Dan Howell.”

“Shit,” Phil marvels. “That’s at least four then, huh?”

Dan scoffs, but he’s looking up at Phil with a bleary smile, reaching towards him with the hand that’s not around Trout.

\--

Dan’s a whirlwind for the last days before lectures start. First he moans that he doesn’t have a bag, or pens, or paper; then Phil suggests that they go out to get some, and he moans that they have to go out to go buy everything. He has a list of what has the best online reviews, but of course the world’s perfect pens don’t exist at the first cheap shop they stop at, or the second, or the fourth. Phil finally talks him into buying a random pack, and promises through his teeth that they can buy the others just as soon as they find them.

\--

“Are you nervous?” Phil says quietly, tangling a hand in Dan’s hair. 

They’re meant to be getting up, and he supposes that Dan’s going to bound out of bed any minute now, but – this is nice, right here, and he has no plans to hasten that. 

“No,” Dan whispers, like he’s trying not to alert the world that he’s awake.

“Would you tell me if you were?”

“Nope,” Dan says after a second of thought.

“Oh, well. I’m sure your therapist would love to hear that we’re so good at communicating.”

Dan laughs, but he pinches Phil’s waist for good measure, pressing his lips to Phil’s collarbone and mumbling _the first rule of fight club_ against his skin. Phil squawks at the mixed messages and pushes him halfway out of the bed with his flailing. They might as well get up, anyways.

\--

Trout sniffs politely at the legs of his desk, then at the new bed underneath. She looks up at him with a quizzical look, wagging her tail a little. _(You’re anthropomorphizing her,_ the Dan-voice in the back of his head says. _She doesn’t care as long as there’s snacks.)_

“It’s okay. I think you’re a person,” Phil murmurs, but he digs her treats out of his bag and gives her a few, just in case bribes work better. 

\--

Trout’s wiggling from the second she spots him.

“Hi,” Dan breathes, once he’s managed to weave his way through the afternoon crowd. He steps in close to Phil’s side. Trout’s bouncing up to plant her paws on Dan’s chest, and Phil has to grab her harness quickly so no one notices she’s being unruly. Dan laughs as Phil tries to wrestle her, but he says _lie down_ in his funny dog voice and she listens, finally.

“You’re horrible,” he tells her, fake-cheerful, before he turns to Phil, forehead creased with worry. “Was she alright today?”

“She just napped all day. Well, and tried to eat Chelsea’s lunch a little bit. Do you want to take her to the park?”

“Yeah,” Dan breathes, twisting to look out the window and check where they are.

“How was uni?”

He knows as soon as he says it that he’ll just end up asking again later, once they’re home. Dan’s starting to look a little bit worn around the edges, like maybe the reality of it is starting to hit him.

“It was alright,” Dan says, vague. Phil doesn’t push it.

They hop off at the stop closest to the park. Dan lets her off leash as they hit their usual patch of grass.

“Get back!” he says, and laughs as she tears away. 

“Come bye!” he calls after a minute, whistling two quick pips for good measure. He grins while she loops around the trees off to her right. Phil doesn’t think he sees what Dan does, watching her like this, but – they both seem at home in a way. 

“Hey,” Dan says softly, once he’s sent her romping back the other way. “Can you get a video for a minute?”

Phil pulls out his phone, obediently, even though it’s nearly dead by now. Dan keeps whistling every once in a while, while she zigzags this way and that, stopping and going when he asks.

He gives one last whistle, once she’s panting. Phil’s pretty sure he could copy that one by now, with how much Dan uses it around the house. She comes trotting back, tongue lolling out of the side of her mouth, looking utterly pleased with herself.

“Do you think she would have been good?” he asks, curious.

Dan laughs, loud and bright. 

“No, she’s atrocious.”

“Really?”

“Oh, god. Alfie let me watch her go, and she – I mean, she was a mere child, too, but fuck, she was terrible. Hang on. _Lie down,”_ he sing songs, as she gets closer, beaming again when she drops into a crouch. “Walk up! You see that?”

Phil doesn’t see anything, just a dog doing what she’s told. He turns to Dan with a question on his tongue, but Dan’s tilting his head to the side and staring at Trout, so openly fond that it makes Phil melt a bit, even though he knows it’s absolutely cheesy.

“She would never do that,” Dan continues, smile pulling at his lips. “He’d say lie down and walk on and she’d just go. He thought she’d die of a heart attack or something, just running laps while he yelled at her to stop. It was like watching a toddler go mental out there.”

“She does it for you, though? Does it – like, does she just like you better?”

Dan thinks about it for a minute.

“No, I don’t think so. I mean, he’d taught her, sort of; she knew what I was saying when we brought her home.” He leans down to clip her leash on, scratching behind her ears as soon as she’s set. _Walk on,_ he says quietly as they start to leave, which Phil thinks might just be him showing off at this point. 

“She just goes mad when the sheep are around,” he continues. “She’s fine without them.”

“Like you,” Phil says, automatic. He winces a little at the phrasing, but then he hears Dan’s laugh, sees his head tip back out of the corner of his eye.

“Just like me,” Dan agrees, smiling when Phil’s eyes meet his.

\--

Phil forgets about it entirely until the next night, when he’s digging through for a picture of a cloud that looked like a horse that he’d meant to post to instagram.

“Oh – did you want to send this to Alfie?”

“What?”

“The video of Trout herding invisible sheep?”

Dan makes a face for second, like he doesn’t remember. “Oh – oh? You mean yesterday in the park?”

“Yeah.”

Dan looks down at the notes he’s got in front of him, like he’s actually working, even though Phil can tell from here that’s doodling spirals in the margins as usual.

“Um,” he says, “I was thinking I’d call my nan and maybe she would want an update, actually?”

**Author's Note:**

> So much love to Cat and Daye for babysitting this, and eto veryone else who's cheered this verse on along the way - it really means so much to me.
> 
> The title is from [Eight Dogs Eight Banjos](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ue_hDRWTWZg), which is my favorite song that starts with a fiddle and dogs barking and a man screaming WHOOOOOOO really loud.
> 
> Come find me at [chickenfreeblog](https://chickenfreeblog.tumblr.com) where we're discussing what eyeballs are for the third day in a row.


End file.
